In this film image released by Sony Pictures, Rooney Mara is shown in a scene from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

Photo: Merrick Morton, Associated Press

In this film image released by Sony Pictures, Rooney Mara is shown...

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Bellmansgatan 1, the real-life building that character Mikael Blomkvist lives-in in reel-life.

Photo: Thomas Karlsson

Bellmansgatan 1, the real-life building that character Mikael...

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Tour guide Eva Palmqvist, center, shows a map of the island of Sodermalm during a Stieg Larsson tour on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Stockholm, Sweden. Fans of the late crime novelist Stieg Larsson are getting lost in the Swedish countryside, searching for the quaint town of Hedestad featured in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

Photo: Niklas Larsson, AP

Tour guide Eva Palmqvist, center, shows a map of the island of...

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The house at Fiskargatan 9 where Lisbeth Salander buys her 21-room flat in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

Photo: Thomas Karlsson

The house at Fiskargatan 9 where Lisbeth Salander buys her 21-room...

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Mellqvists coffeebar in Stockholm.

Photo: Thomas Karlsson

Mellqvists coffeebar in Stockholm.

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Home to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" character, investigative journalist and man about town Mikael Blomkvist in Stockholm.

Photo: Stockholm Visitors Board

Home to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" character, investigative...

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A guide leads a Stieg Larsson's Millenium City tour in Stockholm.

Photo: Thomas Karlsson

A guide leads a Stieg Larsson's Millenium City tour in Stockholm.

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Piamaria Hallberg, guide for Stockholm's museum, conducts a guided tour of one and a half hours at Montelius on Sodermalm island in Stockholm, for fans of Millenium, the cult trilogy of Swedish author Stieg Larsson.

Photo: Francis Kohn, AFP/Getty Images

Piamaria Hallberg, guide for Stockholm's museum, conducts a guided...

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Noomi Rapace in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

Photo: Music Box Films

Noomi Rapace in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

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Steet in medieval Gamla Stan (Old Town), where Stockholm was founded in the 13th century.

Sixty-five million Stieg Larsson fans can't be wrong, I think to myself as I wheeze uphill in central Stockholm.

That's how many people have bought the late Swedish novelist's so-called Millennium trilogy, set in this expansive city of islands. As I reach the hilltop, I look out over Stockholm, taking in stolid stone buildings, blue-gray lake waters, craggy, rocky hillsides, and latticework of bridges linking the 14 islands of Stockholm's urban archipelago.

It all looks so peaceful, and so ... respectable.

But as Larsson's readers know, appearances can be deceiving. Moviegoers who bought $226 million worth of tickets worldwide for the Hollywood big-screen version of Larsson's first novel, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," couldn't agree more. Stockholm, in Larsson's vision, is a dystopia of conspiracy, betrayal, misogyny, murder and revenge. With another Daniel Craig/Rooney Mara pulse-pounder due in 2013, exploring Stockholm now amounts to a 3-D, real-time preview, with aquavit and reindeer sausage in place of Pepsi and buttered popcorn.

So it is that I am traipsing around town with a Stieg Larsson Millennium Tour map in hand, and a knowledgeable tour guide on hand to fill in the "back story," as they say in Hollywood. Larsson places his stories in and near Stockholm, a city of 865,000, referencing real offices, apartments, cafes and bars by name, so seeing them firsthand is an excellent way to see Stockholm.

Old Town

The view from the hilly crest of Bellmansgatan looks across the water to medieval Gamla Stan (Old Town), where Stockholm was founded in the 13th century. Gamla Stan is home to many of the Swedish capital's signature buildings, such as the Royal Palace, the official residence of Sweden's constitutional monarchs. The palace, honeycombed with 600 rooms, faces a large square. A nearby crest in hilly Gamla Stan is crowned by Strokyrkan Cathedral, some 700 years old. Narrow, cobbled shopping and noshing streets cross-hatch the venerable district.

Much of the action in Larsson's tales takes place in a hipper, more contemporary district: Sodermalm. And action is the right word. Larsson's books - as with Hollywood's take on "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" - exemplify the maxim that action is character. His prose is muscular, propulsive, his descriptive writing spare. That is one reason I want to see Larsson's locations for myself: He tells us their names, but not much about what they look like or feel like.

Sodermalm - Soder to the locals - is both an island and a city district. An old working-class neighborhood, it's been newly gentrified and colonized by shops, cafes and bars. Sodermalm was Larsson's turf before his death in 2004. It's also home to his fictional alter ego, the investigative journalist and man about town Mikael Blomkvist.

My tour guide, Elisabeth Daude, who leads Stockholm walks in five languages, shows the way to a midsize apartment building at 1 Bellmansgatan. This is the real-life building where Mikael Blomkvist lives in reel life. Alas, Larsson fans are not invited in for snaps, but the building - a gabled, yellow neo-gothic affair shoved up against the hill - is interesting to look at. Residents use a narrow walkway high above the street to get in. It has sweeping views of Gamla Stan and the water, of course, in keeping with the romantic movie tradition of putting working-stiff characters in incredibly cool digs.

The view from the nearby street of Monteliusvagen is equally picturesque and panoramic. From here, I see the green-roofed Stockholm District Courthouse, where Blomkvist is convicted of slander in one of his many crises. His ally, edgy friend and sometimes lover Lisbeth Salander triumphs in this courthouse when she is declared legally competent in her battle to spring free from abusive authorities.

Running through the middle of Sodermalm is a long shopping street called Hornsgatan. At No. 78 is the Mellqvist Coffee Bar. Larsson hung out in this appealingly buzzy caffeine refueling station; the magazine he edited, Expo, had offices upstairs. Like him, I am a caffeine-challenged journalist, so I linger over a cup, honoring the local tradition of fika - coffee break. In summer, people gather at outdoor tables in front of the black awning. This is the place where Salander hits up Blomkvist for a loan, and parlays it into a $3 billion fortune, enabling her to buy a luxury apartment. But she doesn't give up her junk food jones, buying a Billy's Pan Pizza and a carton of Marlboro Lights in the 7-Eleven at 25 Gotgatan.

At the top

I head over to the apartment building where Salander commandeered 21 rooms on the top floor with her newfound wealth. It, too, is a private residence, stolid and ultra respectable looking. Standing outside the building, at 9 Fiskargatan, I remember Mara's punked-out performance as Salander, the victim-turned-avenging wraith, and am bemused when the guide produces a magazine advertisement for the apartment building.

"Live next door to Salander," the ad reads. Right. And what would happen if the alarmingly thin, pierced and tattooed one really lived here, and you, the aggrieved neighbor, asked her to keep it down? A pool cue in the eye and your computer hacked, that's what.

I have one last place in mind to cap off my tour of Millennium Stockholm, but that's a nighttime haunt, and it is late afternoon. So, I head to downtown Stockholm, riding the excellent tram system by showing my Stockholm Card. The card ($68 to $144 for one to five days) is good for all public transportation and admission to dozens of museums and other attractions.

A few minutes later, I am on Nybbrosatan, a street lined with restaurants and shops and graced with the bountiful 1888 covered food market Ostermalms Saluhall. It is here that I have my ABBA moment.

A sharp-eyed shopper quietly calls my attention to former ABBA member Benny Andersson, who went on to produce "Mama Mia!" the hit musical and movie with sugary renditions of ABBA's musical confections. Benny totes an ecologically sound string bag and shops for deli food, while fellow shoppers pretend not to notice him. There are, of course, also ABBA tours in Stockholm, the 1970s supergroup's hometown (see "If you go"), though no guarantees of star sightings.

Evil Fingers

I end my visit back in Salander's world, hunkering down at a long table in Kvarnen, a tavern where Salander pops in on Tuesday nights to meet members of the rock band Evil Fingers.

I thought Kvarnen, open nightly till 3 a.m., might be on the rough and grotty side. It's not. True, a gruff greeter demands that customers check their coats - no exceptions, house rules - but once inside, I admire a lofty ceiling, immaculate red-and-white checked floor, lovely burnished wood bar and arched windows. Kvarnen, very popular and very local, occupies an Art Nouveau building built in 1911.

Scenes in the Swedish-language Millennium films were shot here and bits of the next Hollywood blockbuster will be, too, according to my server. The place is lively and the beer and the aquavit - Scandinavia's caraway-flavored spirit - are flowing. My dinner of Biff Rydberg - beef with horseradish, a raw egg yolk, diced onions, and diced and fried tomatoes - is good.

It's a fine place to hang out, knock back an aquavit and anticipate the arrival next year of "The Girl Who Played With Fire."

Bergman legacy alive in Uppsala

Up a few steps in 98-year-old Slottsbiografen, tucked away just off the lobby, is a tiny room with an antique movie projector. This plain room has a resplendent pedigree: It was here circa 1930 that an adolescent Ingmar Bergman, visiting the theater with his grandmother, sat with the projectionist and developed his love of movies.

The rest, as they say, is history. Bergman, who died in 2007 at age 89, grew up to become an Old Master of world cinema, as well as an accomplished theater director and author of screenplays, stage plays and memoirs. Born in Uppsala, he returned to shoot movies - most memorably, his 1982 farewell to film, the magical, frightening, childhood memory play "Fanny and Alexander."

It is Bergman's legacy, lovingly and carefully preserved, that brings me to Uppsala, a distinguished university town a 40-minute, $11 train ride north of Stockholm.

Bergman helped introduce several generations to what we now call art films, drawing callow undergraduates like me to the likes of "Wild Strawberries," "Smiles of a Summer Night" and "The Seventh Seal." These pictures, like lingering dreams, were with me years later when I reviewed movies for the old, Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner, and they are with me still.

These days, Slottsbiografen is a revival movie house, arts center and conference venue. A commercial cinema until 1991, it was restored and revamped in 1996. It is a lovely building, paneled inside with fine wood. The small, pretty lobby is adorned with movie posters - including a framed, mounted poster for "Fanny and Alexander." The jewel-box house has a wooden stage and 130 seats, about half the number it had as a pack-'em-in commercial cinema.

There is more Bergmania on offer in the city of 200,000. Uppsala Tourism ( www.uppsalatourism.se) issues a map for self-guided Bergman walking tours, which take visitors through the compact downtown and past stone heritage buildings of the University of Uppsala, one of Europe's most renowned seats of higher learning. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the famous botanist, taught there, as did astronomer Anders Celsius, inventor of the centigrade temperature scale. Former United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld grew up in Uppsala. Linnaeus is buried in the handsome 13th century Uppsala Cathedral.

The Bergman tour takes you to places where the filmmaker shot exteriors for "Fanny and Alexander" and "Good Intentions." Of these, the most impressive is the large stone apartment building at 12 Tradgardsgatan, where Bergman's grandmother occupied an entire floor; this was inspiration for the autobiographical "Fanny and Alexander." The building is just a block away from the old movie house.

Blink and you'll miss it, but there is a shot of Daniel Craig in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" on a balcony in Uppsala. Just over his shoulder is the marquee of Slottsbiografen. It is a short, sweet homage from the 21st century to one of the 20th century's greatest film artists.

If You Go

GETTING THERE

There are no nonstop flights to Stockholm from the Bay Area. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and United Airlines fly nonstop between Newark and Stockholm Arlanda International Airport, and Delta Air Lines flies nonstop between Stockholm Arlanda and New York JFK International Airport. Arlanda Express trains cover the 23 miles to Stockholm Central Station in 20 minutes and cost $39 (6.6 Swedish krona - SEK - to the U.S. dollar). Taxis take 45 minutes and cost about $75. Local buses charge $6.